An Episode of Sparrows

by Rumer Godden

  No one knew how many Malones there were. “There can’t be more than nine,” Angela often said, but they were so big and loud-voiced that the Street seemed full of them. They lived in the basement and top-floor flats of Number Seventeen, and no one would stay long in the flats on the other floors, if they could possibly find anywhere else to go, because of the Malones racing up and down the stairs.

  They were all as alike as peas, all strong and well set-up and astonishingly handsome with well-shaped limbs, straight backs, clear skins, and thick brown curly hair; “The stock must be good,” Olivia was to say when she came to know them. They had the traditional blue eyes put in with smutty fingers—“Irish eyes,” said Olivia.

  “Irish blarney,” said Angela. Angela, as usual, was right.

  “Tip’s got a bowie knife,” said Sparkey longingly. “Every kind of knife.”

  “Who told you so?” asked his mother.

  “He told Puggy Carpenter and Puggy told Jimmy and Jimmy told me.” Sparkey’s mother sniffed. “He’s going to have a nair gun and he’s got a space helmet and a bike with a dual brake control.” Sparkey had faithfully learned all those difficult names. “He’s going into the Navy, he’ll be a sailor,” said Sparkey as if he saw visions.

  “It’s not blarney exactly,” said Olivia. “It’s what they hope and believe is going to happen; it’s a kind of faith.”

  Olivia was right too; there was something in the Malones that not even their poverty and untidiness and shabbiness could hide.

  Mr. Malone, who drove a coal dray, was a big, bragging, blue-eyed man, but the one behind the whole family was Mrs. Malone; she looked, fittingly, like the pod they came from; she was big and bulging and flabby. “She looks used,” said Olivia, whom nobody had used. Mrs. Malone was firmly behind her children: when they got into trouble, and they had plenty of trouble; when they had accidents, and they were always being run over, or falling off buses or onto their heads out of windows, or being taken to hospital in ambulances and returning in bandages or plaster. She was with them in their triumphs, and they took most of the prizes at school; with them in their enterprises, and they were always going off somewhere wonderful or doing something astounding; and she was with them, very often and personally, in their fights. Tip’s nose had been broken in a fight. “He’s a fighter,” said Sparkey with pride.

  It was not only because Tip had been with Maxey that Sparkey worshipped him; there was something in Tip that warmed the cockles of a little boy; Sparkey could not put it into words but, “He once pulled a face at me,” said Sparkey.

  “Why don’t you pull one back,” said his mother, which showed how ignorant she was.

  “I couldn’t do that,” said Sparkey, appalled. “But,” he said reverently, “Tip knows me. P’rhaps one day I’ll be in the gang.”

  “You can’t be in a gang, you’re not six,” said Sparkey’s mother, “and that’s that.” Sparkey shut his lips, and his eyes looked a long way beyond her. Soon his mother would not know what he did.

  It was a strange thing that up to the age of seven children were noticeable in Catford Street; the babies in their well-kept perambulators and the little boys and girls in coat-and-legging sets were prominent, but after the age of seven the children seemed to disappear into anonymity, to be camouflaged by the stones and bricks they played in; as if they were really the sparrows the Miss Chesneys called them, they led a different life and scarcely anyone noticed them. At fourteen or fifteen they appeared again, the boys as big boys that had become somehow dangerous—or was it that there was too much about them in the papers?—the dirty little girls as smart young women with waved hair, bright coats, the same red nails and lipstick as the dancer in the bus queue; they wore slopping sling-back shoes and had shrill, ostentatious voices. The Street prickled with the doings of these boys and girls, as it had admired and petted the babies, but the children were unnoticed except by Sparkey; not even experienced mothers like Mrs. Malone knew all they did. “If the twelve apostles themselves came down and asked him, Tip couldn’t help them,” said Mrs. Malone about Maxey. “Tip never even spoke to him,” she said indignantly. Sparkey knew that Tip had.

  There was no Tip this Saturday morning. The first evening papers had come in and were beginning to be sold, and now the crowd of people in the Street grew thinner; Sparkey’s mother would soon take him away for dinner, leaving her papers to sell themselves; the perambulators were coming back from the shops, and the handcarts from the gasworks with the sacks stuffed now with coke; Mrs. Cleary and Miss Arnot had gone, half an hour ago, into the house behind Sparkey, and now the smell of hot fish was coming out; the biggest cat, Istanbul, jumped suddenly off the portico wall, nearly on top of Sparkey, and walked in at the open door.

  It was nearly twelve o’clock. Soon the clock from St. Botolph’s in the Square would strike, and after that the Angelus. “He must have gone over the river to the park,” said Sparkey. It was disappointing; there was nothing to do but look at the parcels.

  Sparkey did not look at the heavy shopping bags; with their packets of cornflakes and tea and tinned peas, they were not interesting. He looked at the parcels belonging to the children and the big girls and boys. The girls walked together, talking and giggling, with their arms round one another; sometimes they walked backwards, showing off, and a knot of boys on the opposite pavement would whistle, rude, loud whistles. Sparkey knew what the girls had bought; his mother, who was still pretty, bought the same things, and he had seen them all on Woolworth’s counters: a box of face powder, a spring flower in a pot wrapped with tissue paper, hair grips, ankle socks, sweets, a birthday card, tiny bottles of scent which they let each other smell as Sparkey watched.

  Perhaps that was how he did not see the packet fall; someone must have dropped it; suddenly it was there on the pavement among the passing feet, an oblong cream-coloured packet, sealed like an envelope, splashed with brilliant blue.

  Sparkey did not know what it was, but in a flash he had unpeeled the Evening News, darted down the steps, dodged among the people, and snatched it up. He nearly had his hand stepped on as a big girl almost fell over him, but he reached the packet and stood up with it in his hand; it was soiled with being trodden on but it was safe.

  The blue splashes were pictures of flowers; Sparkey was only a little boy, and they caught his attention; instead of scurrying to the steps with what he had found, he stayed there in the open street to look. That was not wise. Somebody’s hand came over his and twitched the packet away.

  Sparkey clutched at the corner as it went, giving piercing yelps to his mother, but she was busy with a customer; another hand joined the first, and small iron fingers began to prise his away. “Leggo, or I’ll pinch you,” said a voice.

  Anyone could have told Sparkey he had no chance; the face that looked down into his was a pale, small mask with pale, set lips; it had an obstinate nose and eyes that seemed to be sealed with their lids. All the little girls in Catford Street could be baffling; if they did not want someone to know something they dropped their lids; when they raised them again they would speak breathlessly and brightly, and it was anything but the truth; but this little girl’s face was more than sly; it might have been carved in stone; when she swore at Sparkey and opened her eyes they were as grey and cold as pebbles. Her hair, which was very fine and mouse-coloured, was cut in a fringe and fell to her shoulders; when she bent her head it parted on the nape of her neck; Father Lambert saw that as he came out of the Priest’s House; it was the only part of her that looked vulnerable, that small white exposed neck.

  Sparkey knew her. She was Lovejoy, Lovejoy Mason from the restaurant.

  “Nobody can be called Lovejoy,” Angela was to say, but Lovejoy was.

  “Your mother didn’t give you a name like that,” she was to say jealously to Tip.

  “I don’t think I want a name like that,” said Tip.

  What Vincent said was worse, but he did not know Lovejoy was listening. “No one who loved their child cou
ld give it a name like that,” said Vincent.

  Now Lovejoy and Sparkey began to threaten each other in the shorthand speech the Street children used. “Gimme,” said Lovejoy.

  “’Smine,” shrieked Sparkey.

  He had steel tips on his little shoes and he kicked at Lovejoy’s shins. “You little varmint,” called Father Lambert, while Sparkey’s mother shouted, “You! Lovejoy! You leave Sparkey alone.”

  “Fancy a big girl fighting such a little boy!” said a woman; but Lovejoy was not fighting, she was, simply, taking. Before Father Lambert or Sparkey’s mother could reach them Lovejoy gave Sparkey a blow in his small stomach that doubled him up, ripped the packet out of his hand, and ran.

  CHAPTER IV

  LOVEJOY pelted down towards the river, then turned and dodged up Garden Row, past the iron gates of the canal dock and the blocks of the council flats with their lawns and concrete paths, down another side road until she found herself in just such another street as Catford Street, wide and shabby with drab, porticoed houses; she was out of breath but safe.

  Older and more wary than Sparkey, she went into one of the porticoes, where no boy or girl could come up behind her, tweak her hair or jerk her elbow, and snatch as she had snatched. She had no idea what she had taken; she was simply a little marauder.

  It would have surprised Lovejoy’s mother, Mrs. Mason, to be told that Lovejoy never had any pocket money; Mrs. Mason was always going to give her some but, somehow, it was always spent. “I meant you to have an ice cream,” she would say to Lovejoy in the teashop or café, “but look, I’ve only got sixpence for a coffee. Never mind. You can have the biscuit.” Mrs. Mason paid Mrs. Combie now, to provide Lovejoy with the necessities of life, but she did not pay enough to provide anything else.

  Now and again Lovejoy had a penny for washing up or running errands, but a penny did not go far. “I can’t go without everything, forever,” said Lovejoy.

  “I don’t know how she managed,” Olivia was to say when she and Angela were told everything.

  “Managed by stealing,” said Angela.

  Lovejoy did not steal big things, nor money; she knew that to take money was wicked; nobody had told her that ice creams and comics were money, and she was adept at taking a parcel out of a perambulator while she pretended to rock it, at making a small child look the other way and whipping a cornet out of its hand, at walking along by a shop counter, gazing innocently all the time at the assistant, and coming out with some sweets or a bundle of ribbon or a pencil-sharpener in her hand.

  Now she looked at the packet, and her look changed to disgust. “Flowers. Seeds,” she said and she almost threw the packet down the area. Then she saw there was printing on it and she began to read.

  Lovejoy, to her continual disgrace, could hardly read. “She has changed schools too often and missed too much,” the inspector had told Mrs. Combie severely. That was true. When Lovejoy and her mother first began to come to Catford Street between their bookings, Lovejoy had appeared and disappeared so often in school that the teacher asked her, “Are you a canal child?” Canal children sometimes came to school if their fathers’ barge had to go into the dock for repairs. Lovejoy had said nothing but she had been mortally offended. “Do I look like a canal child?” she might have said.

  “You think too much about how people look and much too much about clothes,” said Mrs. Combie. Lovejoy did more than think about them; she had been trained in them as in a religion. “One must look smart”—that was her mother’s creed, and Lovejoy was her mother’s disciple. She had been the best dressed child in Catford Street—“On top,” Mrs. Combie said. “Her vests and pants were in tatters from the beginning”—but vests and pants did not show, and Lovejoy never wasted a thought on them. She had a grey flannel suit with a pleated skirt for school, white blouses, and a red beret; for best she had a black velvet dress, a black and white dog-toothed checked coat, and a black velvet tam-o’-shanter with a long black tassel. Lovejoy’s clothes were her stock in trade, her tools, and she took great care of them. When she came in from school or a walk or shopping, she would slip into her old pinafore dress and a plaid coat that she had worn so long that it was like her skin, and carefully put her good clothes away, hanging them up on her small-size hangers, sponging off marks with a bit of rag, and pressing the pleats and lapels with Mrs. Combie’s iron; she washed her own blouses and white socks and gloves, and hung them in the window to dry; a clothes-hanger fitted with pegs was her most cherished possession, and she carefully hoarded the packet of soap flakes, the cleaning rags, and the pot of shoe cream for her red shoes that Mrs. Combie gave her. “She’s not a child, she’s an old woman,” said Mrs. Combie’s sister, Cassie. Cassie was a slattern, and Lovejoy’s fastidiousness enraged her. “I suppose you think you’re pretty?” she said.

  “No,” said Lovejoy certainly. She knew perfectly well she was not pretty; she had studied herself too often in the mirror to have any doubts about that; she had a certain fineness and lightness, dear little bones, thought Lovejoy, but her slant eyes and flat nose were not pretty; all the same, she did not like Cassie any the better for saying it and she adopted a way of looking Cassie up and down, taking in the trodden-down heels of Cassie’s shoes, the ladders in her stockings, the place where the hem of her cheap tomato-coloured dress had come undone; her eyes went over Cassie’s hair, golden but unwashed and bundled in a net, and the spots on her chin. Cassie ate too many sweets and smoked too much. She had stains on her fingers and teeth. Lovejoy saw the stains.

  “What are you looking at?” Cassie would demand.

  “Nothing,” Lovejoy would say and would hum a little tune.

  Lately clothes had been very difficult. “Too tight for you under the arms, isn’t it?” asked Cassie spitefully, looking at the little grey suit.

  “It isn’t,” said Lovejoy, but it was; and the scarlet shoes were too small now, as were her school shoes; they hurt and raised blisters; Lovejoy had five even blisters on the toes of each foot, and the blisters were turning into corns. She had had to tell Mrs. Combie about the school shoes, and Mrs. Combie bought her a pair of plimsolls. “Plimsolls,” said Lovejoy in shame, and she set her teeth and bore the red shoes if ever she went out of the Street. “When my mother comes she’ll buy me some new ones,” she said, but it did not sound very certain.

  “Where is your mum?” Tip was to ask.

  Like all the children, Lovejoy was often subjected to the inquisition of the Street, pecking questions from sharp little beaks.

  “Where d’ya live?”

  “Two hundred and three Catford Street.”

  “That’s the rest’raunt. No one lives there.”

  “Mrs. Combie does,” said Lovejoy.

  “Is Mrs. Combie your mum?”

  “No, she’s not,” said Lovejoy indignantly.

  “Where is your mum?”

  “She’s away.”

  And then one of the children would cry, “Don’t believe you’ve got a mum.”

  “I have”—but Lovejoy said it too fiercely, and they would know and cry, “There’s something fishy about her mum.”

  “What is this Mrs. Mason, if I may ask?” said Cassie.

  “She’s a coloratura,” said Mrs. Combie in the elegant, even voice which showed she did not know in the least what she meant. “A coloratura,” said Mrs. Combie firmly. “Her stage name is Bertha Serita.”

  Cassie made a noise in her nose; it was between a hiss and a snort.

  “Is there anything wrong in being a singer?” asked Mrs. Combie.

  “If she is a singer,” said Cassie.

  “She’s in the Blue Moons,” said Mrs. Combie. “They’re quite well known. You often see their picture in the paper. Look.” And she went to the dresser and took out a cutting from a Bournemouth paper.

  “Pierrots!” said Cassie, looking. “Pierrots on the beach!”

  “The Blue Moons are on the pier too,” said Mrs. Combie, “or in the Winter Garden. They’re a concert part
y really, high class. They wear midnight-blue dresses, real silk net with silver ruffs. It looks lovely with her chestnut hair,” said Mrs. Combie.

  “Her hair’s dyed,” said Cassie.

  “I know, but she’s a beautiful woman,” said Mrs. Combie, “though she is getting plump.”

  “Fat,” said Cassie.

  “Plump,” said Mrs. Combie, “and she has a beautiful skin and colouring.”

  “Out of a box,” said Cassie spitefully.

  “Maybe, but it looks nice,” said Mrs. Combie and she gave a little sigh as she remembered how her fingers had rasped on the blue skirts when she had gently touched them. “They have hats like tiny satin flowerpots with crescent moons. Saucy!” said Mrs. Combie, and a flush came on her sallow cheeks.

  “But why doesn’t your mother take you?” Tip was to ask Lovejoy. “She used to take you, didn’t she?”

  “That was when I was sweet,” said Lovejoy. She told that to Vincent too. “I used to dance on the stage,” she said. When they found out, at school, how Lovejoy danced, they had wanted to give her a part in the school pantomime, but like the children from the Home, who could not have parts either, there was no one who had time to see to her clothes. “I don’t care,” said Lovejoy, who cared bitterly. “I’m not like a norphan. You don’t care,” she told the other girls, “if you’ve danced on the stage.

  “I used to do a kitten dance,” she told Tip and Vincent. “I had a swansdown dress and little swansdown gloves; and I used to do a song with my mother. In it she was dead but she came back at night to see her child. I was the child,” said Lovejoy. “I used to wear a white nightgown and say my prayers to her.”